A bookworm can chew through a millimiter (mm) of paper or cardboard in half an hour. One day it encounters a particularly tasty treat: a two-volume edition of a large book standing on a shelf as shown.

The volumes are identical in size, each has a front and a back cover that is a millimeter thick on each side, and the pages of each are a 10mm thick stack of paper from the first page to the last.

If a bookworm starts its meal on the first page of the first volume (already inside the front cover), how long will it take to eat his way through to the last page of the second volume (inside the second volume’s back cover)?

To start with, are they leatherbound books? Are they covered in vinyl? :)

I think he'd take a damn long time. there's a lot of book-eatin to be done there. who'd want to ram a straight line through to the other side when you've got all that luscious fiber to swim through all up and down the spine?

Posted by Carey on 2002-05-31 02:30:26